It's All in the Genes
by Shin Willow
Summary: Xander finally gets a power, only… not.


Title: It's All in the Genes

Author: Shin Willow.

Spoilers: Probably not.

Category: Drama

Rating: PG-13. Safer that way.

Summery: Xander finally gets a power, only… not.

It's All in the Genes

I'm in hell. No, I've actually descended into a lower level than the one I was in before all this crap started! Hello, my name is Alexander LaVelle Harris, my friends call me Xander, and I'm the world's butt-monkey. Oh, right, and I'm a mutant. Which means instead of just having your vampires, demons and all-around nasties trying to kill me, I got half the world's population gunning for me, too. A good time all around.

You're probably thinking: hey, wow, you're a mutant and you got all these gnarly super powers, isn't that what you always wanted, dude? Well, yeah, I can do with some powers, and if I were any other person I would have got some. But, hello, Butt-monkey. You see, though I am a mutant, I don't have any powers. Can't fly, can't shoot beams of 'insert your own energy-type beam here', no mental powers, no enhancements at all. I'm pretty much the same guy I've always been. The situation is kind of funny, if you hang upside down and look at it cross-eyed.

Okay, the thing, the point of my bitching to you, is I'm a very important fellow. Like I said I'm a powerless mutant, but I still carry mutant genes. All mutants do, and it's been theorized that probably all humans do, too. The X-factor is what makes a homo-sapian, homo-sapian-superior. I guess you can say in my case, the genes are everything. Let me explain.

Unlike most mutants, I was born with my so-called power active. Though, heh, I did have to hit puberty to actually get my mojo to work. My special ability is I can find a nice girl, any old girl, human, mutant, doesn't matter, get horizontal and she'll give birth to a bouncing baby mutant. Everytime, guaranteed. According to Mr. Sinister, the scariest looking albino son of a bitch you ever wanna meet, and I've met some scary people in my time, I'm the product of over three hundred years of careful breeding. Which brings us to my own special hell.

Everyone here has powers. Everybody. There are fifteen-year-olds running around this place who can bench press SUV's with one arm. Then there're the really big guns, like Storm and Iceman. Ororo Munroe and Bobby Drake, respectively. Mister and Mister Omnipotence, I like to call them. And you know what else? Everybody here looks like a fricking super model! Hell, most of them put super models to shame. These are the types of people you couldn't have paid to hang out with me back in high school. People I'd've went out of my way to insult on a daily basis, but can't now because they're all that's standing between me and an exciting life of donating sperm to advance some psychopath's genetic research. And I don't mean donating in a fun way, either. We're talking a tube inserted in a place it has no business being inserted. The Professor also said that there might be needles involved in the extracting process, I stopped him before he told me where the needles were going to poke. I figured it out anyway. Shudder

So here I be, surrounded by all these Buffys', supposedly one of them, but what I really am is somebody they're babysitting until... well, I suppose they're going to be protecting me forever. Or until a cure is found for the X-factor. I'm not holding my breath.

One good thing about living at the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning is the estate itself. I didn't have access to the cool stuff underground, but the above ground was wonderfully opulent. Yeah, opulent. I learned that word in the school they run here. Can you believe they make me take classes? They don't actually say 'Xander, you're going to make with the learning, or else.' Oh, no, they just drop little hints. "You sure you don't want to sit in on one of the classes?" or "Perhaps it might benefit you to learn a bit more about your situation, Xander." Sneaky, passive aggressive bastards.

I've never been in a mansion as nice as Xavier's, and certainly never dreamed I'd be living in one. What I liked best, what made my voluntary house arrest bearable, were the grounds. Rolling hills and woodlands, even a lake so big you can row from one side to the other in ten minutes if you put your back into it. I love to hike across the estate when it gets too sucky back at mutant angst central. I walk and walk until I can't see the mansion anymore, and I'm alone. All I can think about is the old gang: Buffy, Willow, and Giles. I miss the friendship we all shared. I conveniently block out the friendships weren't as ideal as I tend to let myself think, but the memory of the closeness we all once had gets me through the day. Not all the time, but mostly. And it's not like I'm exactly forming anything close to Scoobiness here among the X-Men, so what else do I have to hold on to?

Lot of it's my fault. I admit that. These people make me feel more like a burden, a congenital waste, than anyone or anything has before. It's difficult to believe I once thought Buffy and the others were doing the same in Sunnydale. They were, but not on the X-Men's monolithic scale. I dropped out of one situation where I felt useless, only to land in a situation that magnified all my doubts and insecurities a thousand-fold. The X-Folks try to make me feel welcomed; they are nice people and all. Gotta be to put up with all the bigotry and outright hatred out in the world right now while they're doing their best to save it. But they can't give me what I want. And what I want is my old life back, my friends. Maybe I wasn't so useful in Sunnydale, but at least I was a part of something, even if I was on the periphery half the time.

They're off again. Even Dr. McCoy went gallivanting on today's mission, and he never goes anywhere. I'm not alone in the mansion. They never leave me unguarded. That would be too dangerous. I figure three X-people got babysitting duty, while the others went to work, so to speak. I didn't care. I lounged in the living room watching TV; I did that a lot here. Watch TV and snack on fruit because these people don't believe in the nutritional value of Skittles and chocolate bars. I can't even sneak away and pick up the basic essentials myself. It's terrible, and boring, but Xavier's did have like this super satellite package that helped me muddle through the worst of the tedium.

I was watching the Spanish version of Ren and Stimpy when he came in. Now this guy's been a member of the Babysitter's Club a lot lately. I rarely saw him, maybe a little more than I saw Dr. McCoy, but only just. I didn't know his name, hell, I couldn't tell ya the names of half the people residing in the mansion, it's like a hotel around here. But I'd seen him around once and awhile and I even got to see his power in action back in Sunnydale. Which is kinda creepy, but interesting, I thought. From what I surmised, the guy creates exact duplicates of himself. He can even recreate the clothes he wore, from the leather of his boots, to the metal of his belt. Weird.

We easily ignored one another as we were drawn into the deep, mythological world of Ren and Stimpy. Even in another language, those two are hysterical.


End file.
